Review: In George Lopez’s Show, ‘Lopez,’ He Mostly Plays Himself

George Lopez’s new comedy, “Lopez,” fits in a saturated section of overlap in TV’s current Venn diagram: “Semi-Autobiographical Comedies,” “‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Homages” and “Shows That Overestimate How Interesting Show Business Is.” “Lopez,” which debuts on Wednesday on TV Land, isn’t a bad example of these kinds of series, but if you show up this late to the party, you have to do something pretty extraordinary to be the guest of honor.

Instead, “Lopez” is just another attendee — divorced, often grouchy and frustrated with social media, just like all the others. (Hi, “Louie.” Hi, “Maron.”) Mr. Lopez stars as George Lopez, sort of his specialty at this point. He played a character named George Lopez on his ABC sitcom, “George Lopez,” and one named George on FX’s short-lived “Saint George.” But this go-round is a bit closer to home: He’s mostly playing himself.

Mr. Lopez is flanked by the expected comic foils: a hulking sidekick, a persnickety neighbor. His daughter (Ashley Zamora) is spoiled, and her school is so fancy it has valet parking. In the pilot, George is mistaken for the school’s valet attendant, and it’s one of the many jokes about how Latinos are denigrated and marginalized in America.

More of the humor, though, comes from playing up certain kinds of stereotypes and then subverting the expectations they set. When George gets flack for having too lush a lawn in a drought, he laments that he never had a lawn growing up, and his heavily tattooed driver and pal, Manolo (Anthony Campos, terrific), commiserates. “Well, we might have had a lawn, but there were so many cars on it, you couldn’t even tell,” Manolo says. But then, moments later, he’s quoting drought statistics from a podcast: “It’s corporations and agribusiness that’s the problem. That’s why I stopped eating almonds.”

“Lopez” works best when it settles into being a mostly warm show with a bit of a bite, not a mostly biting show with a bit of warmth. It’s just not self-loathing enough to be a true jerk-centered comedy, and we have an awful lot of those, anyway. (Hi, “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.” Hi, “Flaked.”)

The series’s second episode, the best of the three made available to critics, finds George adopting a dog and hitting it off with a woman from the animal rescue group. He’s flirtatious and charming, even as he’s frustrated and stymied when his date has no idea that he’s a famous comedian. The character George Lopez is much funnier in failure than in success, but, for now, “Lopez” falls somewhere in between.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: The Grass May Be Greener, but Let’s Not Forget the Almonds. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe